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cessful farmer an ignoramus 1 Impossible 1 Impossible I But 

 in order to the most varied and thorouo;h cultivation of the 

 man, or the successful investigation of these varied subjects, 

 he must become familiar with the agricultural literature of his • 

 times ; and, if possible, of all times ; for a farmer without an 

 agricultural library would be like a hoe without a handle, or 

 a rake without a tooth. But the successful former must be 

 more than a reader of books ; he must do more than take the 

 products of other minds and experiments, and use them with- 

 out knowing why ! He must be a thoughtful man, a pro- 

 gressive man. Now the diflerence between the automatic 

 reader of books and the thoughtful man is as wide as from the 

 centre to the poles. The unthinking man is like the bucket 

 that goes to the well to be filled with water, or -the sack that 

 goes to the mill to be filled with grain. . The water that fills 

 the bucket, or the grain that fills the sack, cannot do either 

 vessel any good, it may do them much harm by over-filling, 

 or filling beyond their capacity. This filling process is all 

 too common/ There are too many empty buckets and sacks 

 on our farms to-day, and they are found everywhere, even in 

 our churches and lecture rooms. Empty heads waiting to be 

 filled. 



The thoughtful man is altogether a difierent person. He 

 finds a subject for his thoughts, and a lesson for his learning, 

 in everything around him. The thoughtful fiirmer never 

 takes the tiny seed into his hand without studying the law of 

 germination, of development, and death. He never takes 

 hold of the handles of his plough, without studying the form 

 and structure of the machine, and how it might be improved, 

 so as to leave his furrow straight and smooth, and if he is very 

 thoughtful, he goes down below the furrow of his plough, and 



